Although AMD's Radeon add-in board partners (AIBs) are still "under oath" (read: NDA) not to disclose their products before the 9th of January, Club3D's Radeon HD 7970 press-shots still made it to the web. Pictured below are the Club3D Radeon HD 7970 graphics card and its box-art. The box art is typical Club3D, nothing exceptionally new there. The card, too, sticks to AMD's reference board design, till the point where it uses a red-colored PCB instead of a black one (found on AMD's HD 7970 press samples).

Based on the 28 nm "Tahiti" silicon, Radeon HD 7970 is the first DirectX 11.1 compliant graphics card, it packs 2048 GCN cores, and 3 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 384-bit wide memory interface. The core is clocked at 925 MHz, and the memory at 1375 MHz (5.50 GHz). It is expected that this card will stick to the price AMD disclosed, around US $550.

i don't get why amd keeps using the radial fan design instead of an axial one.
it has been proven everytime since they are in use, that they are too loud.
custom designs are almost always done with axial coolers and they are mostly cooler and quieter...

are radial fans that much cheaper, so the risk of getting bad reviews regarding noise is justified?

by: DrunkenMafiaI have the 2 x reference coolers and they only have a very small out let via the pci bracket, most of the air is recirculated into the case.. that is why I wc'd em. :)

Ah now it makes sense, i was so confused as to what you meant but i agree the small vent on the back of so many 5xxx and 6xxx cards suck for air resistance and cause a lot of air to be pushed through the side vent in to the case.

yeah exactly, and this new cooler looks pretty much the same as the last 2 series of AMD cards except it does have a larger grill for expelling air so I would imagine it to work better, I still feel the design is poor.

by: DrunkenMafiayeah exactly, and this new cooler looks pretty much the same as the last 2 series of AMD cards except it does have a larger grill for expelling air so I would imagine it to work better, I still feel the design is poor.

Actually there is quite a bit of difference.
The 5870 have an air duct after the actual heat sink that channels part of the air back into the case.

But the new cooler on the 7970 is pretty much channels the air strait out of the case.